Different Devices Mean More Freedom

In the past, the drive for improving technology meant specialisation. It made more sense to create one device or mechanism that was especially good at doing one thing, then build a separate device to do another. This was the mindset of the “factory assembly line,” where things got done faster when machines—and people—focused on one task.

This same kind of thinking initially applied to computers as well, and people who used computers got used to the idea that the computer at work did not do the same things as the computer that might have been at home. And the laptop was not going to be doing the same tasks as the desktop, while that videogame console—which was also essentially a computational device—did only games. Despite the fact that they were all computing devices, they did different things.

In the 21st century things are very different. Computing devices have grown so powerful and so versatile that they can ably handle a number of tasks just as well as any other different computing device. People can now watch movies or listen to music on any device they own because the concept of multiplatform functionality is much more feasible. And this is also true of the way people work and how business track and report expenses.

When you decide to use modern expense report software, you are not just using a program, you are entering in a program ecosystem. Employees can have the equivalent of the same expense report software installed on their computer at home, the laptop they do their work on when they travel, the office desktop and even as an app on their preferred mobile device. Expense report software can now be wherever your employee needs to be, and can work on whichever computing device is most convenient or available.

Thanks to the online connectivity of the information, this also means that up to date information is available for everyone. So that same employee does not have to re-enter the same data into the expense report software every time a new device is used, and can simply continue to keep the existing expense report up to date with the latest expenses.

All of that may sound merely convenient, but in many ways, these indirect conveniences have a large impact on efficiency. And that benefits everybody.